Help Wanted in USA! Single, Male, Young, English Fluency

What does Jared Kushner’s immigration policy mean?

Here is one summary, from the New York Times: “Currently, about 12 percent of those immigrants qualify to enter based on their skills, while more than half are given permission to enter because of a family connection. Under Mr. Trump’s proposal, those numbers would be reversed, with nearly 60 percent of all visas going to immigrants with particular skills or offers of employment.”

Sounds wonderful at first glance— base immigration policy on merit.

But there are big fallacies in the plan, which is a version of the Cotton-Purdue Senate bill, with the catchy title RAISE Act The RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act.

The real intent behind the Kushner plan is to reduce immigration to approximate the inflows in the 1920s and 1930s.

Currently, the nation’s population of immigrants is about 14.7% (includes legal and illegal immigration). See first red bar (meaning, according to CIS, that we are in danger right now).

I’ve included a chart from an anti-immigration policy group, Center for Immigration Studies. It is accurate— it comes from U.S. Census Bureau— but CIS has color-coded future years in red bars because it fears more immigration.

So, let’s boil down the merit idea. 
What does it mean, and who will successfully immigrate?

He (not she) will be young, unmarried (and unattached), with no kids, likely college-educated, and pass an English proficiency test (or use college degree as a proxy).
Picture Stephen Miller. He fits the criteria.

Who won’t immigrate? A married Indian man with computer programming skills in his late 20s (or older) who is married and/or with kids.

A Middle Eastern man—including Israelis, with valuable medical technology skills— who is situated like the Indian man.

Physicians from Canada, computer programmers from South Korea, global grain traders from Brazil, poorly educated Central Americans who are willing to do the real dirty jobs in the U.S…. You get the picture.

This is a modified version of three fiercely anti-immigration laws that the U.S. enacted 100 years ago: The Immigration Act of 1917 (required passing an English test, which sharply drove down the number of people boarding ships to the U.S.), the Emergency Quota Act of 1922, and the National Origins Formula Act of 1924. 
Key word: Quota. 
Limit: 100 per nation. 
Result: The gradual depletion of immigrants in the U.S. from the 1910s (see chart, at 14.7%) to 4.7% in the 1970s.

The bottom line: when immigration is pitched as a merit proposition, foreign men who feel deeply committed to being married, having children, and taking care of aging parents drop out of the in-flow. 
It takes decades to replenish that stock. 
Perhaps worse, America misses out on high-achieving first generation Americans, wherever their parents came from.